


of stars that do not give a damn

by thatgirlwho



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Heavy Angst, One-Sided Attraction, Slightly non-con, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 23:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10627062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgirlwho/pseuds/thatgirlwho
Summary: “Merlin told me. How well you’ve done. I am…” Harry clears his throat, steps closer, “incredibly proud of you. You have proved everyone wrong.”Eggsy doesn’t move.“Did I prove you wrong?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **WARNING: very unhappy ending, completely unrequited, could be depressing/upsetting.**

“ _Six fucking_ months, Harry! And you couldn’t even be arsed to pick up the damn phone!”

Eggsy’s hands are gripped so tightly around the glass, Harry worries it may break. He thinks to tell him to let go but he knows where that will lead, the furrowed line across Eggsy’s brow marking his anger betraying any composure he may have possessed.

He’s tired, he’s downright exhausted having travelled two days to get back to London and home, and he just wants Eggsy to understand _why_. He wants to explain and he wants to apologize and he wants to go back to that day and say nothing at all, so he doesn’t have to be here, faced with Eggsy’s outrage. He didn’t realize how unbearable it would be. Hoped Eggsy would see reason far sooner.

“You’re failing to see the point, why I had to keep my survival a secret.”

“What, you thought I’d grass you up? Go blabbing my mouth about it? Good to know you think so highly of me.” Eggsy knows his words are cruel; Harry can see the gleam in his eye at the pause that seems to howl with its emptiness.

“We didn’t know how far Valentine’s reach had gone. The gunshot was fortunate–”

Eggsy rounds on him, his face incredulous, red with rage. “Fortunate? I watched you get shot in the fucking face!”

“– _fortunate_ because it gave me the perfect cover as a ghost operative. It would have been near impossible otherwise.”

Eggsy looks like he wants to say something, his jaw clenching in ticks and spasms. Instead he turns back to the bar, fills his glass and drinks, one swallow to drain it. Harry winces.

Eggsy mutters, after a moment, “You could’ve told me.”

“Merlin thought it best you didn’t know.”

“You know what–” Eggsy cries out, pointing an accusing finger in Harry’s direction, still not turning to face him, won’t even look at him but he can direct his fury so well, “– _fuck_ Merlin! _Fuck_ Kingsman! And fuck _you_ especially!”

Harry knows he’s deserves it. He wishes he didn’t but he does. So he tries for something else–pacify his broken spirit, begin to make amends. He knew what he was going to say, had thought of it all these past six months, but Eggsy didn’t want to listen. Harry hadn’t anticipated this when he really should have.

“Merlin told me. How well you’ve done. I am…” Harry clears his throat, steps closer, “incredibly proud of you. You have proved everyone wrong.”

Eggsy doesn’t move.

“Did I prove you wrong?”

Maybe this is good. Harry can start with truth, unravel all the things that went wrong. He never meant to hurt Eggsy, cause him to wonder what his worth was. This is not how he meant to leave Lee’s legacy, a broken boy suffering through his self-imposed deeds, torn apart by the things he had said in anger, left in silence for months to let his distrust seep in like a disease.

This was not how you repay someone. This is not how you make their sacrifice worthy of your mistakes.

“Especially me. I know how hard it must have been–”

Eggsy cuts him off, one hand raised. One hand trembling. “You don’t. You really don’t.”

“I never intended to leave you wondering what I truly thought of you. The things I said…”

“You said them. You meant them. Maybe not now, but then you did. You said them and it happened. You can’t pretend it didn’t. Not now. Not when you couldn’t even–not like this.” Eggsy’s words are harsh, clipped, cutting straight to Harry’s guilt that he has harboured all these months. It’s fair and Harry wants to slap Eggsy for being so belligerent and heartless, refusing to understand.

Eggsy doesn’t deserve it but Harry wants to.

“You are right,” Harry says instead, nodding, “You’re absolutely right.”

An uneasy silence settles, as they always do in these moments. Eggsy doesn’t answer him and Harry isn’t sure what else he could say, if he should say anything at all. Eggsy drinks more and doesn’t offer Harry. Harry doesn’t ask. He stands at the door, his hand still on the handle, squeezing his fingers around it’s cool metal, focusing on it so he doesn’t have to watch Eggsy refill his glass again.

“Merlin’s told you how well I’m doing, yeah? Did he tell you everything else?” Harry looks up at him then. Eggsy’s voice is small; something feels off, is weighing down on them both and Harry is finding it difficult to breath. “That I can’t go home, because of the nightmares? Can’t ever sleep ‘cause all I hear and see is that _fucking_ church? That he found me in your office,” Eggsy laughs, loud and brittle, and it dies as it comes, flint-quick and horribly hollow, “how many times he’s found me there… drunk off my face because it’s all I had left? Just this… this memory of you.”

There’s something more there, in Eggsy’s twisted up features. Something that’s not just anger at being left in the dark, something that’s not just hurt at being lied to. It’s something so much more, like an indefinite sorrow. Something heavier, something more vicious in its destruction because it comes from a feeling all encompassing, started far more kind. Infinitely kind and staggering in its intensity.

Oh, no.

“Eggsy.”

He wants Eggsy to stop. To stop this, stop talking, don’t say any more. But his mouth isn’t working and it sounds like pleading when he says his name, but it’s not. He wants it to be more angry, more commanding, more final in its force and execution. _Stop, Eggsy, I can’t fix this–_

“That the only reason I’m fucking good at my job is because I needed to prove you wrong, that you didn’t make a mistake. And I did, I did _every fuckin’_ day.” When he says this, he taps two fingers roughly against the bar top, making the glasses and decanters rattle. “And you were alive and you didn’t _care_.”

“Eggsy… I was–I didn’t know.”

He didn’t, he really didn’t. He didn’t think it would be this–wrong. He didn’t think it would hurt this much. He didn’t know what he had done, what had led Eggsy to believe otherwise, but he should have. He should have seen the way Eggsy looked at him, mistaking his fond adoration for awe of a glamorous life and bewilderment at what lay ahead. Thinking his kindness and friendship was clear in its intentions, was not taken for anything else. He should have looked closer, paid better attention to how they regarded each other, and he didn’t and he is ashamed, guilt-ridden, for it all because… this isn’t what Eggsy thinks it is.

“No, of course you didn’t! Never bothered to ask, yeah? Merlin told you that I was the perfect candidate, that I did as I’m told, that I fight so well.” Eggsy voice breaks. He’s leaning against the bar, his glass abandoned. “I thought I could be you, I thought–was sure that’s what I wanted. What I needed. I needed something, _anything_. You were–” Eggsy’s breath hitches, stutters, and he swallows and Harry thinks he might cry, _nononono_ – “everything. And I missed you. So much.”

Harry closes his eyes, takes a steadying breath, leans against the door. This is not how it was supposed to happen, his heart in his throat, a burning cold twisting his stomach.

_Stop, please._

“I think… I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, Eggsy.” It comes out sounding all wrong, far too dismissive for a truth so large, but Harry isn’t sure how to word it to make it sound okay, even in the slightest.

When he opens his eyes, because Eggsy is not speaking, is not moving, Eggsy is staring at him with eyes so wide, eyes so dark, he clenches his teeth.

The look in Eggsy’s face is furious, detached. Everything shuts down and Harry is _sorry_. He is so sorry that he cannot love Eggsy like the man wants. But he can’t, he can’t. He doesn’t think he could ever.

He loves him. But not like that.

“Wrong impression,” Eggsy repeats. His words are slow, like they are coming from a great distance. It must be, it must be, there are hundreds and thousands of miles between them, standing even as close as they are now.

“This is–it’s nothing more than this.” Harry can’t stop talking. He just wanted to explain. He didn’t want this.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone more defeated, more ruined than Eggsy in this moment, standing in his own old office at the manor, eyes gone glassy with drink, eyes gone wet as he blinks slowly, mouth a thin hard line. He’s standing in a low golden light from the setting sun and all Harry sees is a man he thought he saved from a less favourable life.

A friend he cared for, and let down. Nothing more.

It’s barely there, the devastation. Harry could almost believe he imagined it.

“Oh.”

“Eggsy, please, listen.”

Harry is stumbling away from the door, towards Eggsy, reaching out for him– _what could his touch ever do now for the boy, no comfort to be taken when there was so little to give_ –but Eggsy is pushing past him, a shove that sends him back against the wall, one hand hitting the bar, more glass rattling and echoing so damn loud in this incredibly empty room, and Eggsy is gone, the door slamming shut behind him before Harry can say any more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who let me do this to them.

It is a surprising change in venue from where Harry usually finds himself on these nights: a pulsating neon monstrosity always packed to the corners with writhing, sweating bodies locked in some kind of mass-induced delirium, the air reeking of spilled beer and perfume, his shoes sticking to the floor. Sometimes, it did bother him, how heavily it weighed on him and how the memory of that church could still catch him off guard, all this time later; mostly, it's just the noise and the smell and the press of too-hot skin against him that makes his head throb, his body ache. 

And, yet. Here he is. No more than twice a month, if he's lucky. More if he's not. Because he gets those frantic, breathy, laughing-out-loud over screaming static phone calls from Eggsy and he always, always comes, out of some sense of obligation or remorse; he hasn't quite figured which one it is yet. 

As soon as he gets in the door, ignoring the suspicious glance the bouncer gives him when he's handed back his ID, he has to squint into the near dark. At least in the manic clubs Eggsy usually frequents, there was flashes of light to guide him, let him scan the room effectively. Not that he always found Eggsy inside: he has picked Eggsy up, barely lucid, from back alleys, hauling him back to the taxi as Eggsy's feet caught on nothing and he stumbled to the pavement; has dragged him, thrashing and furious, arms gripped around Eggsy's shoulders, away from a fight or argument with Eggsy yelling and laughing and spitting in the other person’s face; has roused him from where he had fallen asleep against a booth or in a lavatory, stinking of piss and vodka, cigarettes and other people, and let Eggsy lean on him, bury his face in his shoulder. 

Amongst the bluish haze and mingling groups and rich wooden walls, he spots Eggsy by the centre bar, leaning forward on his elbows, chatting happily with the bartender. He's laying the charm on thick, tilting his head to the side, that lopsided endearing grin that Harry had first noticed about him all that time ago in The Black Prince, and the bartender is giggling at something Eggsy says, glancing coyly up at him every so often as he talks on and on, mixing the drinks distractedly, blushing when Eggsy reaches out and touches the back of her hand. 

At least there is a comfort in knowing Eggsy's ability to seduce a target, for whatever reason, still functions well even when he’s absolutely wasted. Well, the barest of comforts.

Harry mumbles his apologies and his excuse me’s as he makes his way to the bar, where he lays his palm flat on the counter between Eggsy and the bartender just as she is setting down the drinks. 

“Eggsy,” Harry says in stern but kind voice when Eggsy looks up at him, “it’s time to go.”

For a minute, Harry thinks Eggsy is going to come with him without much of a fuss. Then, Eggsy barks out a laugh, reaching forward across the bartop, plucking the drinks from the bartender's hands. 

“Aw and I just got myself another drink.” Eggsy tosses a few notes on the counter and shrugs at Harry, an amused, apologetic grin on his face. “Just one more, come on!” 

He's already backing up into the crowd, being swallowed by the shifting packs of girls in low slung dresses and boys in bright coloured dress shirts, and Harry doesn't have the energy to go after him. Harry sighs, mostly out of habit now because this is becoming all too routine, and settles himself into a barstool, watching over Eggsy as he saunters back to his apparent date, a lovely little blonde with pursed pink lips, a drowsy content look on his face, a drink in each hand raised high over his head. 

Harry can keep an eye on him from here, monitor how much he has left of his drink and calmly remove him from the table before he gets the idea to grab another. He's not particularly interested in the way Eggsy is leaning bodily towards the woman, his arm around her slight shoulders, his face nuzzling up against her neck, his hand resting on her arm. He's seen it all before and he finds it all rather boorish, unnecessary, constantly exasperated that Eggsy could not conduct himself with a bit more respect in public. 

He surveys the bar with disinterest, not really taking anything in; he's thinking of his warm bed at home, the chill in the air tonight despite how it's only mid-summer and the paperwork waiting on his desk in the morning. He's looking at his watch, thinking if he times it right, he can get three, maybe four hours of sleep, before he has to be up (he had promised Merlin to meet him for breakfast and the man always demanded they meet earlier than God himself rose in the morning) when he notices someone watching him.

It's more an attuned feeling than it is actually him _catching_ her staring, the woman sitting with Eggsy, his hand now resting on her waist. Harry’s attention instantly snaps to her and it takes her a second to react, to look sheepish and duck her head back down. 

Eggsy catches this, glances back at Harry with his brow furrowed, a wry twist to his mouth, before he looks back at her. There is shrugging and huffing and shaking of heads; Eggsy leaning closer in and his head nodding forward and the woman running her finger along the rim of her glass. 

It happens all rather suddenly and Harry doesn't pick up on it as fast as he should: the woman gesturing to him, trying to smile, and Eggsy sitting up, his shoulders and back rigid. 

Then Eggsy is looking back at him.

There's a subtle shift in the way Eggsy's face goes from this drunk honesty to a pinched rage, his soft bright eyes that flitted around the smoky haze to find Harry again suddenly becoming exacting, righteously offended. Harry barely has time to stand from his spot, let alone intervene, before Eggsy is rising from his seat, stumbling, knocking his drink over and spilling it across the woman’s lap.

"He ain't my _fucking_ dad!” 

It comes loudly across the bar, loud enough over the mind-numbing bass and hum of chatter, enough that a group standing off to the side of Eggsy’s table all turn to look at him, confused and embarrassed in turns. 

Harry crosses the floor quickly to meet Eggsy, taking him by the shoulder and stepping in front of him. Another man had approached the table at the same time as Harry, his chest puffed with a primal focus in his eyes, and Harry did _not_ need this, not tonight. 

“Problem here?” the man asks, looking over Harry's shoulder to Eggsy. 

“No, it was an accident, I assure—”

“Mind your own, you prick.”

“Eggsy, for God’s sake—”

“Hey, it _is_ my own when you threaten a lady.”

“I knocked my drink over, I didn't hit her—”

“You're being a bit of a cunt, mate, so maybe you—”

“Fucking call me a cunt again, I fucking dare you—”

“It's fine!” The woman shrieks, her wide eyes glassy and wet, and they all look at her, bewildered, as if they forgot she was there. “It's fine, I'm fine, I'm really really fine! _Please_!”

The music continues to fill the space around them, vibrate through their silence, though the rest of the bar now looks over in curiosity to where Harry stands with his hand across Eggsy's chest, the other held out to the man who was staring Eggsy down with a vicious determination, ready with his fists clenched at his sides. 

“Come on, Harry,” Eggsy mutters from behind him after a minute, his voice brittle, venomous in a way that sets Harry's teeth on edge. “Let’s go. Ain't worth it, the wanker.”

As Eggsy storms off, Harry goes about damage control: explains in vague and satisfying terms his friends behaviour to the still bristling man who watches Eggsy push through the crowd with narrowed eyes, then he apologizes to the now snivelling woman, who is patting uselessly with a napkin at her soaked dress; he tracks down the bartender and pays Eggsy’s tab (only 250 quid, which isn't the worst damage he's done—Eggsy seems to get very generous with his money when he gets out on nights like these), and politely makes his way back outside to the clear, fresh air, away from the ever-present noise and unrelenting press of people, and breathes in deeply, relieved.

He spots Eggsy off to the side, standing underneath a lamppost, flicking a lighter with a cigarette hanging from his lips, glaring down at the pavement. 

“You have a fleet of Kingsman drivers to pick you up,” Harry reminds him coolly when he approaches. 

Eggsy gets his cigarette lit, pockets the lighter in his coat and takes a drag. “Hmm, you’d think that, wouldn't you?” He's talking with the smoke still hanging from his lips and Harry wants to take it out of his mouth, flick it into the gutter, just to see the stunned angry look on Eggsy's bleary face. 

“Merlin’s told me that the taxi’s for work related trips, not my own personal limo service,” Eggsy says with a snarling, sarcastic tone; he takes another drag and looks sideways at Harry, nodding his head, the corner of his mouth ticking up in a smile. “Knew you’d come though.”

“This is the last time,” Harry states. 

Eggsy shrugs, unbothered. “You said that the first time, too.”

Harry stares at him, irritated and appalled, thoroughly disheartened, unable to recognize the man before him. What had become of the bright, promising boy he had found, had hoped to give a second chance, to see him grow and succeed beyond expectation? Squandering it in dingy bars and smoke-filled clubs, apparently. 

“You didn't apologize to the woman in there.”

“Oh, fucking hell—” Eggsy groans, frowns, rubs a hand over his face vigorously. “Harry, I don’t wanna be a goddamn gentleman all the time, alright? I want to go out to a pub, spend all my nice cash, get fucked off my face and not get a fucking etiquette lesson in the process, yeah? Too much to ask?” He's waving his cigarette around as he talks, bits of ash glowing bright and floating to their feet. Harry watches them fall, flare and burn up to dark spots on the pavement. 

“Why do you keep calling me?” Harry asks after a moment. 

This seems to startle him into an awkward lull and Eggsy spends a minute chewing on his bottom lip, watching Harry carefully, the cigarette held between his fingers at his side. Then, looking to his feet, he mutters, “I dunno. Just do. First person I think of.”

It's not much of an answer but Harry knows it's all the answer he will ever get. 

“Come on, then.” Harry begins walking down the street—he had to park three blocks over and is dreading navigating London’s late night traffic. “Time to get you home. I think you've had enough for the night.”

But Eggsy doesn't follow. He stays underneath the buzzing fluorescent light, the smoke still at his side, rolling his thumb against the filter. 

“You don’t get it, do you?” Eggsy asks in a small, despairing way. “What’s going on. With me.”

Harry’s eyes drift closed as he breathes out a sigh. He's tired—tired of this, these wasted nights pulling Eggsy from his drunken stupors, sobering him up with water and dry toast in his kitchen at four in the morning, depositing him at his mother’s doorstep with an apology and a door closed in his face, unable to bring himself to leaving Eggsy alone in his own flat. And he keeps falling for it, coming back every time, brought here by bad conscience or a nagging doubt or just a general uncertainty that plagues him: that he can't shake the thought that he has been left with the responsibility to look over Eggsy, no matter what’s come between them. 

He wonders if he will always be trying to repay some kind of debt to Lee Unwin, if Eggsy will always be keeping that resolution just out of reach. 

“Eggsy,” he starts but Eggsy's already coming towards him. 

Harry doesn't back down when Eggsy crowds into his space; he squares his shoulders, straightens his back, hands folded behind him. He knows that months ago, for a fact, that Eggsy would sink back from this kind of provocation, just a bit, undermined but bursting with a self-assurance that he would not completely stand down. But they have had this conversation before, in some way or another, so many times, that it had become well rehearsed, more like reciting lines they had been given. Sometimes the tone or pacing changed depending on the night, but it always ended the same way for them both: Harry easing Eggsy into complacency, understanding, and Eggsy turning languid and disinterested, turning away from Harry when he decided it was enough. 

“You—you mean everything to me,” Eggsy says, stumbles over his words, “and yet… I’m nothing to you.”

“That’s not true,” Harry protests. His voice wavers when he doesn't want it to. “I care about you.”

Eggsy is searching with him a hard stare, like he could pry him apart and find whatever he’s looking for underneath, _if only he could_. “But not like I care about you, though.”

“No.”

“God,” Eggsy breathes, falling back on his heels and away from Harry, his hands and arms coming up, “I just—I just _thought_ something would change. You’d change.”

“I don’t think I need to justify or explain—”

“I’m not asking you to,” Eggsy snaps, throwing his hand out, waving it in front of Harry's face. “ _Christ._ I’m just saying.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry admits, watching Eggsy pace the sidewalk, his white trainers scuffing against the kerb. 

Eggsy stops, mid-step, balanced with a hand over his mouth. “You could never see me that way?” 

Despite the reluctance, the doubt evident in him,Harry cannot stand how _almost_ hopeful Eggsy also sounds, an enthusiasm bolstered by too many drinks and too many opportunities to daydream countless scenarios where this could ever become something more. If only Harry gave it some consideration. As if it was all just waiting for this night, here and now, for Harry to have his golden revelation, his change of heart.

“No,” Harry states plainly, as he's done so many times before. 

Harry thinks to say he's sorry but he knows he has nothing to be sorry for.

“Shit. I'm really drunk,” Eggsy says now, a dull, listless look coming over him, his eyes unfocused. His shoulders slump and he throws his head back, blowing out his cheeks. “I want to, to go. Go home. Take me home, yeah?”

They walk the three blocks to the car without talking. Eggsy rests against the car, arms folded and his head down, while Harry waits. He looks at his watch—3:04 AM—, flexes his hands on the steering wheel, turns down the interior lights so they are a only muted blue glow. He finds himself getting impatient the longer Eggsy doesn't move, almost ready to start the ignition, even imagines himself driving away, leaving Eggsy in the car park, still thinking he's leaning against the car as he drives and drives until Eggsy is a speck in his rear view mirror. 

But then the car door opens, the cool air rushes in and Harry blinks awake. Eggsy looks lost as he sits, staring around, then finally settles on Harry. 

“Harry…”

“What is it, Eggsy?”

Eggsy is looking at his lap, his face unearthly in the pale blue dashboard light.

“If I promise, I promise, Harry, I fucking promise I will… if I do that, promise to stop calling you to come get me,” Eggsy stammers, his words slurring as his head nods slightly, “will you kiss me?” 

It’s not a promise to stop this but it’s something. Harry hates that, even for a brief second, he considers it. Then, he's sickened by himself, swallowing down a lump in his throat, and shakes his head. 

“No, Eggsy. It's not a good idea.”

“Just once. It don’t gotta… it won't mean anything.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Harry, please.”

And he may not love him like Eggsy wants but he still finds it hard to deny the man anything. It's the guilt, it's the guilt for leaving Eggsy without a father, for letting Eggsy get to the point where he thought he could be loved by Harry, for always answering these phone calls knowing it's not helping the matter in any way and letting all this fucking guilt claw through him, chew him up, spit him out raw. 

Before he can protest, or even move, Eggsy has crawled over the centre console, has braced his arms on either side of Harry's head, palms against the door, and he's so close that Harry forgets to breath. And he doesn't even wait, he doesn't even wait for Harry to tell him no, before he's kissing Harry, vulgar, graceless—then, needy and sloppy, drawing out some strangled deprived moan deep from within Eggsy, open mouthed and slick wet tongue across Harry's teeth. Harry chokes on his next breath, on the taste of Eggsy, the vodka he drinks and the cigarettes he smokes and something nauseatingly sweet—something the girl who he smiled at and spilled a drink on and looked at with such hatred had been drinking, maybe. It makes Harry sick, all of it, the entire disgusting misery of it. 

“Eggsy—” Harry has his hands on Eggsy's shoulders, pushing, pushing, and Eggsy pushes back, moans again, whimpers against him, the sound of it going through Harry like a horrific shock, a straight drop of repulsion to his gut. “Eggsy, for fuck’s sake—stop.”

Eggsy stops, blinks up at him, his gaze heady and pupils blown, his parted lips slick with spit, chest rising and falling with heavy pants. 

“I’m—I’m with someone.”

Eggsy’s face darkens, scrutinizing, gaze flickering. “What’s his name?”

Harry levels a stare at him; he tries to shrug Eggsy off but he's heavier in his inebriation, somehow, like gravity and mass intensified around him, his knees digging into Harry's thigh. Harry shifts and grimaces in pain when Eggsy doesn't move. 

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

Eggsy sneers, then flushes and looks ashamed. He slowly pulls himself away, settling back into his seat, his cheeks blotched red, his ears burning. 

“No, yeah—yeah, you’re right. Sorry, fuck, fuck me—sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Harry smooths down the front of his jacket, taking a minute to compose himself, to rub the spit from his mouth with the back of his hand. Eggsy's sitting folded over in the seat, his head in his hands between his knees, perfectly still. It's not until Harry starts the car and pulls out of the car park and onto the nearly empty road, does Eggsy sit up, exhaling in shudders before further sinking into himself, leaning over to press his forehead against the window. 

The lights of London blur by in a haze of filmy yellow and pops of blue, of white, illuminating the car in harsh contrast, dark shadows and dazzling flashes of light. Eggsy looks sickly, colourless, his eyes half-closed every time Harry glances over at a red light. 

Tonight, he thinks, he'll take Eggsy straight home. Sometimes, he would allow Eggsy to come back to Stanhope Mews so he wasn't falling asleep alone or, when he did go somewhere else, stumbling into his mum’s house, wasted and careless and making an unholy racket. Taking Eggsy back home, to his home, to try calm him and put something in him besides beer and smokes, seemed a wretched, foolish, idea to him now; he's surprised he ever convinced himself it was a good idea to begin with. 

“Harry,” Eggsy mumbles against the window when they are nearly to Eggsy’s flat, Harry turning off onto a side street. “Harry, why d’you keep coming for me? If this, us… not us. Yeah?” He nods as if Harry understands, still staring out at the window, eyes still half-closed. “Why?”

In some surge of frustration or exhaustion or need for relief, Harry says, without really thinking, “Because I pity you.”

And Harry sees Eggsy's face contort with a cruel mix of mortification, a kind of resignation to truth, like maybe he'd always known. He breathes unsteadily, inhaling with small gasps for a few seconds, his breath ghosting across the window. Then, he nods, once, his fingers twisted together in his lap, knuckles white from the strain. 

“Okay, Harry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a thing I certainly did.


End file.
